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Though he tries to avoid restrooms "at all costs," high
school student Jason Foster says they're sometimes unavoidable at
school.

Leander Independent School District requires students to use
bathrooms based on their birth certificates. For Foster, who is
transgender, that means using a gender-neutral bathroom or - when he
can't get across campus in time - the girls' restrooms.
It's a predicament that has led to "terrible
experiences," Foster told a committee of state lawmakers earlier
this month as they took up the latest "bathroom bill" under
consideration.

Girls have yelled at him to get out. Boys have told him he was going
into the wrong restroom. He's even once had a coach yell at him for
using the girls' locker room, forcing the "awkward
conversation that that's where I apparently belong," he
said.

Currently, the only workaround would be for him to change his birth
certificate. But that's not an immediate possibility for
Foster.

"I'm already required to use the bathroom of the gender on
my birth certificate, which as of today and most likely the rest of my
high school experience, will be female," Foster told the committee.
"To change that is expensive, time consuming and would require me
to be on testosterone for six months, which I'm not yet
on."

Foster's testimony echoed a reality for transgender men, women
and children in Texas that's tough to reconcile with
Republicans' proposals to limit bathroom use in schools and local
government buildings to what's on a person's birth
certificate. The process for updating government-issued documents is
riddled with challenges and a lack of uniformity that can make the task
insurmountable for some.

"It is case-by-case: where you were born, where you live and
how old you are," said Lou Weaver, transgender programs coordinator
for Equality Texas.

In order to modify a birth certificate in Texas, the Department of
State Health Services requires transgender individuals to present a
certified court order stating the recorded sex on a birth certificate
should be changed.

But a transgender person's ability to obtain that court order
is largely determined by where they live and their socioeconomic status,
according to transgender individuals, advocates and lawyers who have
worked with transgender Texans on the process.

Some county judges - even in more liberal urban areas - are less
eager than others to grant the court order that's required by the
state, particularly when it comes to children. That forces some
transgender individuals to travel to counties like Travis, Bexar or
Dallas, where such court orders can be easier to obtain.

It can also be an expensive process. Court filings fees can reach
$300 even before adding on attorneys fees or travel requirements. The
process can be even more cost-prohibitive for transgender individuals
because they must also obtain letters from both a doctor and a mental
health provider certifying they are transgender and under their care to
present to the court. For some, that also presents a geographic barrier
because Texas faces a shortage of doctors and therapists "who do
this kind of work," said Claire Bow, an Austin-area attorney who
helps transgender people obtain updated documents.

But for Bow, there's a bigger flaw with Republicans'
proposals for bathroom restrictions and the expectation that transgender
people could immediately take steps to obtain updated documents.

"The important thing to understand is it's never the first
step in the process," Bow said of amending birth certificates or
IDs. Bathroom bills assume that every transgender person has "gone
all the way through the process" or have reached the point in
treatment at which their doctors and therapists will sign off on the
letter needed for court.

"That's why this is hard," she added. "Nobody
wakes up one day...and changes their sex."

The outcome of this complex process is that many transgender Texans
live with birth certificates that don't align with their gender
identity for years if not their entire lives.

Estimates put the number of transgender adults in Texas at about
125,350 and the number of transgender children aged 13 to 17 at 13,800.
But in the last four years, court orders have been used to change the
sex listed on a birth certificate for an average of 45 individuals a
year, according to data from the Department of State Health
Services.

Meanwhile, transgender individuals who were born in other states can
face an even tougher path to amending their birth certificates.

Testifying before the Senate State Affairs Committee earlier this
month, Ohio-born Marissa Johnson asked Republican state Sen. Lois
Kolkhorst, the author of the bathroom bill in the Senate, how she would
prove that she is a woman if she were challenged in a restroom.

Kolkhorst responded that she had a driver's license to which
Johnson replied: "So do I. It says female. But according to this
law, I would not be allowed to go into the restroom."

Johnson explained to lawmakers that her home state - along with
Tennessee and Idaho - does not allow transgender people to change the
gender on their birth certificates.

After hearing from Johnson and other transgender individuals born
outside of Texas, Kolkhorst amended her bill to allow IDs issued by the
Texas Department of Public Safety, including driver's licenses and
handgun licenses, along with birth certificates in determining which
bathrooms individuals should use in schools and local government
buildings.

Just like amending a birth certificate, obtaining a Texas ID with a
different gender also requires a court order, according to DPS, which
did not have a count of how often it approves such changes readily
available.

But even with a court order, that process is not without
complications, said Erick Macias, the administrator of the men in
transition group at San Antonio's Pride Center. Because of a lack
of education or understanding in certain locations, Macias says he often
has to redirect transgender people to certain state offices where
they're less likely to face additional or uncomfortable
questions.

"Sometimes it can be a little bit of a circus," he
added.

Macias notes the process has improved since 2004 when he first
embarked on amending his birth certificate and ID and his attorney was
not aware of the specific requirements. Since then, lawyers and support
groups have become more knowledgeable about the process, but obtaining
documents that reflect their gender still remains out of reach for many
transgender people living in Texas today, he said.

If a bathroom bill becomes law in Texas, which remains unclear at
this point, questions remain about how it would be enforced.

Under the proposed legislation both in the House and Senate,
transgender individuals would not be fined for using restrooms that
match their gender identity. Instead, the legislation leaves enforcement
up to the Texas Attorney General's Office, which could file a
lawsuit against a city or a school district that doesn't enact the
bathroom restrictions.

Kolkhorst herself has acknowledged that people would do
"whatever is necessary for themselves," even if that meant
using a restroom that doesn't match what's on their birth
certificate.

But that kind of ambiguity could leave people like Jason Foster in
the frustrating situation of using one restroom while in school and
another in other public settings.

"I think I should follow the rules people tell me to
follow," Jason told the committee when he was asked about going
into the boys' restroom instead. "And I don't want to
break the law whether I can get away with it or not."

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